With all the talk among the Republican hopefuls for President about opening up more of the US for energy exploration in the name of job creation, here's an infographic laying out in stark terms how many more jobs can be created, and more energy saved, through energy efficiency than through replacing or building new nuclear power plants. For half the cost of a nuclear power plant, 1.6 million homes could be retrofitted to be energy efficient enough to offset the entire power output of that plant, all while generating 220,000 jobs--roughly 90 times more than with another nuclear power plant.

In short, energy efficiency saves gigawatts of power, generates more jobs, and at a much lower cost than more fossil fuels.

Green Economy Generates More Jobs, Employs More People Than Fossil FuelsIf you want it explained another way, according to data from the Brookings Institution, the green economy employs more people than the fossil fuel industry and is growing more quickly than the economy as a whole, with median wages 13% higher than those of the economy as a whole.

The constant Republican linkage between opening up more areas of the US for energy exploration (whether oil offshore or natural gas via fracking or more tar sands via pipelines) and both creating jobs and increasing energy security is simply a false linkage, mired in utterly un-visionary, fear-based, business-as-usual profits-as-usual for polluters, thinking.

With all the talk among the Republican hopefuls for President about opening up more of the US for energy exploration in the name of job creation, here's an infographic laying out in stark terms how many